Shoulders

The hill is a hard pillow 
in the morning, knotty pine
piercing my mammoth nape, 
reality needling into daydreams.
 
Truth is, 
nobody loves a giant. 

Rising like a countryside eclipse 
my shadow blocks the day 
from the city below,	
a tranquil din 
dominated by car horns and ignorance.
 
Scuttle turns to silence 
as my feet hit city pavement, 
hot, old boots 
like houses in the rhyme 
of a Mother Goose childhood.
 
Screams, 	
age old fear, 
setting small people on edge
with their bullet-shaped spears 
and pitchforked prejudice – uneducated.
 
Enlightenment comes with thunder, 
bouldered fists lifting 
my unlearned cousins, beyond their ken 
to my shoulders –  
tense and empty fields.

Birdlike, perched,
glory laid bare, they curse me
and their miniature world
of plastic and rubber and small dreams. 

The sky holds blueprints
of castles and immortality,
my gifts, in awesome terror seized – 
when tiny shaking fingers 
finally touch clouds.

——

Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota where he lives with his wife and children in a house that is not a covered wagon. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Gone Lawn, ExFic, The Harpoon Review, An Alphabet of Embers, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter @nliebert.

——